The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus and an image formation control method.
Image forming apparatuses such as copiers and multifunction peripherals that use electrophotography are commonly known. An electrophotographic image forming apparatus typically includes an image forming section that includes a photosensitive drum, a charging device, and a developing device. The charging device charges the photosensitive drum. An electrostatic latent image is formed on the photosensitive drum by irradiating a circumferential surface of the drum with laser light while in a charged state. The developing device forms a toner image by causing toner to adhere to the circumferential surface of the photosensitive drum on which the electrostatic latent image is formed. In an image forming apparatus that uses a primary transfer method, a toner image is transferred directly onto a sheet of paper from a photosensitive drum. In an image forming apparatus that uses a secondary transfer method, a toner image formed on a circumferential surface of a photosensitive drum is transferred onto a sheet of paper via an intermediate transfer belt.
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus typically has an exchangeable toner cartridge installed therein from which toner is supplied to a developing device. Note that toners differ in terms of properties such as chargeability depending on components included therein. Therefore, exchanging toner cartridges may unfortunately lead to variation in the amount of toner that adheres to a photosensitive drum.
In consideration of the above, an image forming apparatus has been proposed that controls each component of an image forming section in accordance with components of toner contained in a developing device. One specific example of an image forming apparatus reads various control values from a storage component of an installed toner cartridge and controls components of an image forming section based on the control values that are read. For example, the storage component of the toner cartridge stores a control value for correcting an electrical potential that is applied to a photosensitive drum by a charging device. Each of the control values is a value that is optimized for components of toner contained in the toner cartridge. Therefore, even when toner cartridges are exchanged, an image can be formed with appropriate image quality based on various control values that are read from the storage component of the installed toner cartridge.